NCAA Division II Top 25: May 13

As
the 2014 regular and conference seasons came to a close there wasn’t
much movement in the overall D-II baseball rankings. The top eight
teams in the rankings remained the same with Tampa, Lander and
Minnesota State once again filling the first through third positions
as they have since the first week of March.
The
top ranked Spartans had the week off from competitive baseball as the
Sunshine State Conference doesn’t have a postseason tournament. The
Bearcats continued their impressive run with a sweep through the
Peach Belt Tournament to captured their first tournament championship
in school history and increase their winning streak to 17 games. The
Mavericks failed to win the NSIC Baseball Tournament; however Matt
Magers’ Mavs did suffer both their setbacks by slim 2-1 margins.
Jumps
were made in the rankings by three teams who are hitting on all
cylinders at the right time. Grand Valley State mauled their way
through their conference championship, outscoring their opposition
45-17 in four games to win its ninth GLIAC tournament title in the
last 12 tries. Alabama-Huntsville leapt from the outskirts of the
rankings into the top 20 after charging through the Gulf South
Conference Championships. UAH was able to avenge an earlier loss to
West Florida and win two from Delta State the final two days to win
the program’s second GSC Championship. The wins secured the
Charger’s invite to the South Regional while ruining the Argos’
postseason hopes.
In
the west, UC San Diego has been playing their best ball of the year
and is headed into regional play by winning nine of their last 10
games. The Tritons outscored top-10 ranked Chico St twice and Cal
Poly Pomona once to enter the rankings at the 20th position as well
as capture the CCAA Championship.
Drury,
Southern Arkansas, Augustana and Southern New Hampshire all also
climbed up the rankings after going a collective 11-0 last week while
winning their respective conference championships.
The
NCAA Regionals were released Sunday night and the biggest news of the
night was the absence of West Florida’s name from the South
Regional listing. The Argos had solidly been a top 10 team almost the
entire season and field an elite pitching staff which has the second
lowest ERA in the nation. Headed into the final weekend of the
regular season UWF had gone 12-1 with a win over highly ranked
Columbus State. However the Argos suffered a heartbreaking loss in
their series opener with Delta State and were consequently swept in
three road games by the Statesmen.
UWF
did have a respectable 3-2 showing in the GSC Tournament which
included both a shutout and mercy rule win. Nevertheless, the
committee gave the final at-large bid to Florida Southern, a team
which UWF beat in a head-to-head series in Lakeland to start the
season, and went 3-3 the final two weekends against unranked teams –
although St. Leo is pretty dang good. As a result the Argos were
dropped to 19th in the rankings, not so much because of their
on-the-field performance, but because they are unable to go any
farther this season.
One
more shout out to the Arkansas-Monticello Boll Weevils. UAM earned
its first-ever regional postseason appearance after its most
successful season in school history. The Weevils reached the Great
American Conference Championship Tournament title game for the second
year in a row and were awarded the fifth seed in the Central
Regional. Not too shabby for a team which went 0-37 just six years
ago and had a 13.86 team ERA.